Social Impacts of Computing: Codes of Professional Ethics

Associations of computing specialists have adopted codes of ethics parallel to those of professional societies of engineers and scientists. These codes have attempted to address the special ethical dilemmas posed by computing. Difficulties in obtaining consensus about ethical imperatives make the development, revision, and maintenance of these codes problematic. The codes of professional ethics from 10 associations are compared with respect to content and focus. A recent revision of the Code of Ethics for the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) is offered as a model for social science computing specialists. Keywords: ethics, codes of ethics, computer professionals, computers and society.